Self-With-Others
Self-With-Others is a framework for thriving in an interconnected world.
It gives you solid ground to stand on, when the world seems overwhelming and chaotic.
It shows you how to be individual, integrated, empowered, ethical, compassionate, creative and courageous.
Self-With-Others helps you belong – in your body/mind, workplace, community and natural environment. It combines personal, interpersonal and systemic perspectives, to create an integrated and holistic approach to living.
Self-With-Others reminds you how extraordinary this wonderful world can be – and how to live in it with respect and a commitment to stewardship.
Self-With-Others, combines perspective shifting insights and practical tools to enhance your ability to understand and change your life.
It’s draws together perspectives from personal development, ensemble, system thinking, alongside techniques of mindfulness, presence, communication and systems analysis. Together they create a powerful foundation for healthy and effective living.
Self-With-Others grows from thirty years experience training performers to be live, reactive and fearless. It has inspired and transformed people in multiple countries all around the world.
Self-With-Others challenges core assumptions about how to live – that we must always compete, that mind and body are disconnected, that we’re separate from ‘nature’.
Drawing on scientific, ecological, spiritual, performance, sociological, psychological and educational traditions and research, Self-With-Others inspires and transforms people in business, community activism, healthcare, therapy, education, spiritual enquiry, performance, creativity, coaching and personal development.
Self-With-Others is an invitation to live more easefully, and with awe, at the centre of your own life.
There are pages on this site dedicated to Self-With-Others for Educators, Self-With-Others for Personal and Professional Development, Self-With-Others for Business & Community Development & Self-With-Others for Performers.
There are also resources for those who want to explore Self-With-Others through books and courses.
Want a little more detail?
Presence is the foundation.
Self-With-Others focuses on understanding how to connect with NOW.
You have agency only in the present moment. Being aware and open to NOW (presence) is the foundation of creativity, empowerment and effectiveness. Enhancing presence builds multiple personal and interpersonal attributes, including confidence, communication skills, connectedness, creativity and compassion.
Self-With-Others retrains our ability to be more fully, powerfully and mindfully present with ourself and others. It’s an empowering suite of techniques and insights to transform and realign your experience of life.
The heart of enhancing presence in Self-With-Others are The 8 Principles of Presence.
Three Domains
Self-With-Others stands on three main pillars:
The Integrated Self
Interconnection
Understanding Systems
The work on ‘The Integrated Self’ is based in Psychophysicality. This explores the integration of body and mind into a coherent, non-dualistic, human organism.
The work on ‘Interconnection’ is based in research on Ensemble. It explores effective, creative collaboration through mutual empowerment. It investigates the interaction between competition and cooperation – as observed in all natural ecosystems.
‘Understanding Systems’ is based in Systems Thinking. This involves identifying and understanding processes of interconnection. Systems produce outcomes and feedback loops which cannot always be mapped onto specific inputs.
To enable transformation – personal, social or institutional – requires attention to all three areas at once: the self, interconnectedness and structural/systemic feedback loops
These three core pillars are expanded through six more areas of research:
- Via Negitiva – Understanding the power of doing less, unblocking and stopping.
- Flow State – The psychology of optimal experience, pleasure and intrinsic motivation.
- Paradigms – Identifying self-stories and exploring strategies for changing them.
- Improvisation – Developing the capacity for fearless responsiveness.
- Authenticity – Aligning with purpose across multiple social roles.
- Encouragement – The power of positive reinforcement.
By integrating all these areas, Self-With-Others helps you align with reality and enhance personal and professional effectiveness.
Self-With-Others offers techniques of transformation.
These techniques and strategies include:
Understanding and applying The 8 Principles of Presence
Using the ‘psychophysical loop’
Engaging with your senses
Stopping/Doing Less
Understanding flow state
Changing paradigms
Integrating changes across three domains – personal, interpersonal and systemic
Developing fearless confidence
Enhancing creativity
Alignment with purpose
Radical Self-acceptance
Effective positive feedback
The five-part learning journey
Embodiment
Neuro-plasticity
Manipulating interpersonal energetics
Balancing collaboration and competition
Self-With-Others develops the following qualities (among others):
Openness
Mental discipline
Charisma
Compassion
Curiosity
Kindness
Acceptance/Tolerance
Wonder
Easefulness
Enthusiasm
Motivation
Optimism
Empowerment
Relational Sensitivity
Personal attunement
Creativity
Presence
Attention to detail
Mindful Awareness
Connectedness
Self-confidence
Resilience
Self-awareness
Collaboration within diversity
Self-motivation
Reflective and learning skills